I denied it, guilty nevertheless of a smile which belied me. But, in my inmost conscience, I knew only too well that I had not spoken in fun. This young dialectician, whom my paradoxes amused, would have been chilled, revolted, estranged from me for ever, if she had thought that my courtesy hid nothing but this brutal scepticism, this cowardly lack of curiosity.
The train was late; Madame Landry wished to set me free:
"The time is getting on ... if you have to go as far as your cousins'...."
I naturally replied that I had plenty of time before me.
"And then you want your papers!" Jeannine insinuated maliciously.
It is true that I watched for the arrival of the Paris papers every evening. Simply a matter of habit; so little news concerned me! The day before, as it happened, the post had brought me nothing. I almost suspected Jeannine of having laid hands on the mail. In any case, my vexation and my grumbles had delighted her.
An absolute child!
The train still did not arrive. Conversation languished. I started a subject likely to interest the travellers. They were going to make a short stay on the shores of Lake Leman, a part which was strange to them, but which I said they would think they recognised, it bore so great a resemblance on the whole to the French Riviera, the neighbourhood of Cannes and Mentone, where they spent the winter. I told them of a comfortable hotel at Montreux.